Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank (Russian: Семён Лю́двигович Франк; 28 January 1877 – 10 December 1950) was a Russian philosopher. Born into a Jewish family, he became an Orthodox Christian in 1912. In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia and lived in Berlin. In 1933 he was replaced as head of the Russian Scientific Institute. In 1945, he moved to Britain.
Participant in the collections “Problems of Idealism” (1902), “Milestones” (1909) and “From the Depths” (1918). He strove for a synthesis of rational thought and religious faith in the traditions of apophatic philosophy and Christian Platonism, and was strongly influenced by Nicholas of Cusa. Already while in exile, he discovered the similarity of his research with the ideas of Vladimir Solovyov (especially in the light of the concept of positive unity).
Childhood
Semyon Ludwigovich Frank was born into a Jewish family. His father, doctor Ludwig Semyonovich Frank (1844-1882) — a graduate of Moscow University (1872), moved to Moscow from the Vilna province during the Polish uprising of 1863, as a military doctor participated in the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878, for courage and devotion to the Russian Empire, he was awarded the Order of Stanislav and elevated to the dignity of nobility. L. S. Frank worked in the Health Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the family lived on Pyatnitskaya Street, then in the Myasnitsky district; Their father’s mother (the philosopher’s grandmother), Felicia Frenkel, lived with them, as did their father’s sisters Teofiliya and Eva. In 1891, 9 years after the death of her husband from leukemia, S. L. Frank’s mother, Rosalia Moiseevna Rossiyskaya (1856-1908), remarried the pharmacist Vasily Ivanovich (Tsalel Itsikovich) Zak, who returned from a six-year Siberian exile in 1884 , which he served for participation in “Narodnaya Volya”.
As a child, Semyon Frank received home education from his grandfather, Moisei Mironovich Rossiysky (1834-1891), a native of Kovno, who was one of the founders of the Moscow Jewish community in the 60s of the 19th century and whose grandson took an interest in the philosophical problems of religion. R. M. Rossiyskaya and her children lived with Moisei Mironovich and his wife (the philosopher’s grandmother) Sora Dobriner (1834—?, originally from Tilsit in East Prussia), first in the Myasnitsky district, and from 1899 in her own house in Krivoy Lane ; my grandfather was involved in the tea trade. In 1886-1892, Semyon Frank studied at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, where he was immediately admitted to the second grade. In 1891, his mother moved to her new husband in Nizhny Novgorod and settled in Kanavino. Semyon joined them a year later and graduated from high school in Nizhny Novgorod, after which he entered Moscow University.
Scientific career
While still a high school student in Nizhny Novgorod, S. L. Frank took part in Marxist circles, under the influence of which he entered the law faculty of Moscow University (where he was a student of the famous professor A. I. Chuprov). In 1899 he was arrested and expelled from university cities. In 1901, P. B. Struve invited Frank to participate in his collection “Problems of Idealism” (published in 1902), where materialism and positivism were criticized.
Soon after this, Frank went abroad, where he worked in Berlin and Munich. Disagreement with the policies of the tsarist government prompted him to participate in the founding of the Liberation Union movement in 1903 and to take an active part in its struggle for political freedom.
Frank’s first published work (“Marx’s Theory of Value”) was devoted to criticism of Marxism (1900). In 1902, his first philosophical sketch (“Nietzsche and the Love of the Distant”) was published in the collection “Problems of Idealism” — from that time on, Frank’s work became entirely connected with the problems of philosophy. After passing the master’s exam (1912), Frank became a private assistant professor at St. Petersburg University and in the same year converted to the Orthodox faith. In 1915 he defended his master’s thesis (“The Subject of Knowledge”), which concerns the ontological conditions for the possibility of intuition as a direct perception of reality, thereby joining the movement of intuitionism.
The book “The Soul of Man,” published in 1918, was presented by Frank as a dissertation for his doctorate, but due to the external conditions of Russian life, its defense could no longer take place. In 1917, Frank headed the history and philology department of the young Saratov University, and in 1921 he took the department of philosophy at Moscow University.
In 1922 he was expelled from Russia, settled in Berlin and became a member of the Religious and Philosophical Academy, organized by N. A. Berdyaev, with whom he worked in Moscow (at the “Academy of Spiritual Culture”).
In 1930 he moved to France, from where he moved to London in 1945.
Family
Brother — Russian and Soviet mathematician Mikhail Lyudvigovich Frank, professor, author of works on geometry, differential equations and the history of aeronautics. S. L. Frank’s nephews (sons of Mikhail Lyudvigovich Frank) are Nobel Prize laureate in physics Ilya Mikhailovich Frank and biologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Gleb Mikhailovich Frank.
The younger brother (on the mother’s side) is an artist, sculptor, set designer and book illustrator Leon (Lev Vasilyevich) Zak (1892-1980), who published poems under the poetic pseudonyms M. Rossiysky and Chrysanf, who was one of the ideologists of the ego-futurist movement in the 1910s. His wife, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Braudo (1894–1976), was the sister of organist and music teacher Isaiah Braudo. Their daughter, Irène Zack (1918-2013) is a sculptor.
Wife (since 1908) — Tatyana Sergeevna Frank (nee Bartseva, 1886-1984), author of the memoirs “Memory of the Heart.” Son — Viktor Semyonovich Frank (1909-1972) — literary critic, radio journalist, headed the London bureau of Radio Liberty. The youngest son, Vasily Semyonovich Frank (1920-1996), also worked as a journalist at the Radio Liberty station in Munich (since 1964). Other children are Alexey (born 1910) and Natalya (born 1912).
Frank on unity
Frank believed that there were serious philosophical and logical arguments against subjective idealism. Subjective idealism comes from the “I”, which stands at the center of the universe. During a dialogue with the world, a person discovers something in himself — something that can be called “you”. But there is something else — what we call “we”.
Like his predecessors, Sergei Trubetskoy and Solovyov, Frank emphasized that human consciousness, human “I” are not cut off from each other. Real knowledge, real being are possible only when contact arises between people, unity arises. We do not live on isolated islands, but on a single continent. And this continent, which unites us all, is the last and true object of knowledge. A person learns not only the reflection of his own feelings, but also learns a certain substrate, depth. Later, the German philosopher Paul Tillich wrote that God is not the sky above us, but the depth of existence. However, Frank said it first.
In 1917, Frank published the book “The Soul of Man,” which was subsequently published more than once in foreign languages. Frank has been translated into many languages, including Japanese, Czech, Polish, German, English; Naturally, he himself wrote books in these languages. This book brilliantly analyzes the question of the unity of spiritual life, which cannot be cut, cannot be divided. This unity concerns not only our “I”, but also the field in which those “I”s to which we are turned are located. That is, “I”, then “we” and, finally, some mysterious substrate, which is the incomprehensible.
At the same time, Frank had a negative attitude towards collectivism, which crushes the individual. Any dictatorship is contrary to freedom, and divine unity cannot exist without freedom, it is free.
Frank on socialism:
“Socialism in its main socio-philosophical concept — to replace the entire individual will with the collective will… putting in its place the existence of the “collective”, as if to mold or glue the monads into one continuous dough of the “mass”, is a meaningless idea that violates the basic irreducible principle of public and which can only lead to paralysis and disintegration of society. It is based on an insane and blasphemous dream that a person, for the sake of planning and orderliness of his economy and the fair distribution of economic goods, is able to renounce his freedom, his “I” and become entirely and completely a cog in the social machine, an impersonal environment for the action of general forces. In fact, it cannot lead to anything other than the unbridled tyranny of despotic power and the dull passivity or bestial rebellion of the subjects.”
Bibliography
Vekhi [Landmarks] (1907)
Der Gegenstand des Wissens. Grundlagen und Grenzen der begrifflichen Erkenntnis [Knowledge. Principles and Limitations of Conceptual Perception] (1915) (French translation, ‘La Connaissance et l’etre’, 1937)
Dusha Cheloveka (1917) (English tr., ‘Man’s Soul’, 1993)
The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1921) [in Russian]
Vvedenie v philosophiyu (i.e. ‘Introduction to Philosophy’) (1922)
Zhivoe znanie (1923)
Krushenie kumirov [i.e. ‘The Downfall of idols’] (1924)
Religion and Science [in Russian] (1924)
Smysl zhizni (1926) (English tr., ‘The Meaning of Life’, 2010)
The Basis of Marxism [in Russian] (1926)
Die geistigen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft (1930) [also in Russian] (English tr., ‘The Spiritual foundations of society’, 1987)
Realität und Mensch [Reality and Mankind]
Nepostizimoe (i.e. ‘The Unfathomable’) (1939) (English tr., ‘The unknowable: an ontological introduction to the philosophy of religion’, 1983)
God With Us: Three Meditations … Translated from the Russian by Natalie Duddington (1946)
Light and Darkness [in Russian] (1949) (English tr., ‘Light shineth in darkness’, 1989)
V. Solovyev: an anthology (1950)
Reality and man (1956)
